Glass Fibre and Paper Aerospace Composite

This composite material is a sandwich of polyester resin, glass fibres and an aramid paper honeycomb. These three materials can be fairly weak in isolation, but combined in this particular structure they are exceptionally strong for their weight. So strong in fact that these kind of reinforced honeycomb sandwich panels have been used in the floor and wing panels of Boeing 747s. The geometry of the honeycomb, which occurs naturally in bones and beehives, gives it very good stiffness and resistance to compression. Because each of the tessellating hexagons is hollow, the honeycomb uses less material for the same function and has heat and sound insulating properties. Because the glass fibre and paper are immersed in a transparent resin, you can see the intermeshing materials, which create an interesting optical effect.